30 years of partnership
9
president, Phillip King, a sculptor. It was across a dining table at Rules three years ago that another academician, Eric Parry, said: ‘Nick’s really good in committees. He knows how to get things done.’ Or, as Grimshaw puts it: ‘You can’t get anywhere at the RA without taking the members with you. You have to win them over. It’s like going for planning permission with a scheme. You don’t do it until you’ve covered your ground.’
Tat fundamental but personable shrewdness has led
directly to at least two strategically important changes at the Royal Academy during his watch. Te first concerned an archaic, potentially disastrous, governance system. Until Grimshaw’s presidency, the academy existed as ‘a huge partnership in which the members were personally liable for everything from health and safety to the building burning down. I converted that, making the RA a company limited by guarantee. Tat created a feeling of understanding of what the whole thing was about – a powerful, sensible institution’. Grimshaw’s next move was more radical. ‘I thought
there should be some external interests in the RA,’ he explains. ‘Tere were two years of agonising about the RA being run by artists, and a fear of being taken over by outside interests.’ But he won the day and, five years
ago, three outsiders became insiders: the High Court judge, Sir Alan Moses; corporate financial officer, John Coombe; and the media figure, Mariella Frostrup. ‘Te members would roar away and bang on the table, and then a quiet voice from one of the external members would say, “I really don’t think you can do that”. It’s diluted the incestuous atmosphere.’ Te Royal Academy’s annual portrayal of new
architecture has changed, too. Grimshaw notes that this year’s prize exhibit was machine made, and speaks wistfully of the cardboard and balsa concept models exhibited in the 1980s. Even so, he rates this part of the RA’s summer exhibition as unique in giving massive public exposure to the work of young, or completely undiscovered, architects. ‘And it’s still about beauty,’ he says into his mobile
phone, while travelling towards London on the M11 from his Norfolk retreat. ‘I have all my black sketchbooks. I’m up to number 74. I’ve given the first 62 to the Royal Academy library. And I’ve been drawing with charcoal again – I’ve done four Tuesdays at the academy schools’ life class. Te last time I used charcoal was exactly 50 years ago, when I was at the Edinburgh School of Art. I love going to the life class. I’m going to keep going. I draw all day.’ Jay Merrick
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